


one equal temper

by hairgel



Category: How to Get Away with Murder
Genre: Alternate Universe - Spies & Secret Agents, Blood and Gore, Gun Violence, Hospitalization, Hurt/Comfort, Implied/Referenced Suicide, M/M, Torture
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-11-12
Updated: 2014-12-17
Packaged: 2018-02-25 03:20:10
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 6
Words: 8,940
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2606579
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/hairgel/pseuds/hairgel
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>“Q.”</p><p>“Thought I told you to stop calling me that,” Oliver says. He looks up from his hacking long enough to grin at Connor from behind his computer screen. “Welcome back, Agent Walsh.”</p><p>Spy AU.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

 

“Q.”

“Thought I told you to stop calling me that,” Oliver says. He looks up from his hacking long enough to grin at Connor from behind his computer screen. “Welcome back, Agent Walsh.”

Connor swipes an unfinished prototype from Oliver’s desk and settles in a chair to wait. “New toy?” Connor asks, tilting the gun this way and that, every molecule of his being demanding Oliver’s attention even as he’s attempting the opposite. He bumps his knee up against Oliver’s every couple of seconds. Connor’s not very good at being ignored.

“Uh, yeah,” Oliver says, and then trails off to spend the next ten seconds squinting at his screen.

_“Oliver.”_

“Oh, um, yes. The thing.” Oliver starts again, holding his hand out for the gun to avoid the amused tilt of Connor’s lips. Something pings on the computer behind him but Oliver ignores it. The metal feels warm in his hands as he holds the prototype at an angle for Connor’s convenience. “There’s something wrong with the trigger mechanism. See this here? The firing pin’s not in the right place or something, or at least that’s what the memo says --”

“Aren’t you in IT?” Connor interrupts.

“I know!” Oliver says, and Connor has to lean back to avoid being pistol-whipped. “That’s what I keep telling Engineering but they keep sending these things up anyway.”

Connor lifts a brow. “So you’re making firearms now.”

“Oh no,” Oliver laughs. “I’m using them as paperweights.”

Connor’s eyes crinkle in amusement. Something in Oliver’s chest twists into a tight knot.

 

* * *

 

Turns out Connor brought take-out, and he leaves all of it by Oliver’s desk before disappearing into Annalise Keating’s office. Oliver waits twenty minutes out of courtesy before he digs in. Keating’s debriefings are notoriously thorough.

Connor shows up again just as the office lights go off, as Oliver’s divvying up the fortune cookies in the dim glow of his desk lamp and computer screens. Connor leans over Oliver to grab one to nibble on.

“How’d it go?” Oliver asks.

“Love is right around the corner,” Connor reads, rolling his eyes. He crushes the fortune into a tiny ball and flicks it at Oliver. “It went fine. Got a new mission. I start tomorrow.”

Oliver frowns. “Don’t you get at least three days of downtime before the next mission?”

Connor shrugs and reaches for the container of fried rice by Oliver’s elbow. Connor looks smaller like this, curled up in an office chair with dark smudges under his eyes, picking at his food in the half-darkness of Oliver’s workspace. The food’s stone cold by now but Connor doesn’t seem to care.

Oliver reads his own fortune and throws that away too.

 

* * *

 

Agent Walsh’s M.O. is 70% honeypot trap and sheer stubborn focus on completing the mission. He’s good. In fact, he's better than good -- he’s Keating Five good.

And Oliver’s… well. He’s the guy who provides the gear, who occasionally does some hacking should the op require it. Nowhere near the cool part of the operation. If you’re looking for someone to make the idea of espionage unsexy in a post-Daniel Craig Bond world, Oliver’s definitely your guy. Even so, Oliver's an optimist -- IT offers a much better survival rate than field agent, plus the dental benefits are great.

“There.” Oliver checks the transmitter in Connor’s watch one last time and steps back with a nod, watching as Connor fiddles with his cuffs and smooths out the lines of his suit, all clean, sharp edges and dangerous cunning. Oliver finds it hard to reconcile this version of Connor with the Connor who buys take-out for no reason, who stifles yawns and sits cross-legged in Oliver’s chair, who eats more than his fair share of fortune cookies and then denies doing it afterwards.

“Sure you don’t want to bring a gun?” Oliver asks. “I could get one for you.”

Connor smirks and looks at Oliver in that ridiculous Connor way -- head slightly tilted, eyelashes sweeping long and dark over his cheeks. Oliver would be more furious with himself for coughing and averting his gaze but better men -- and the occasional woman -- have had their lives ruined by that same look. Literally.

“Worried?” Connor asks, laughter in his voice.

“Uh, _yes?_ ” Oliver says.

Connor drops his cufflink.

“Oh,” Connor says, as Oliver immediately goes to retrieve the cufflink from under a desk. Tom Ford suits aren’t made for crawling around on the floor with. Connor offers Oliver his right wrist when Oliver finally comes back with the damn thing. He’s quiet while Oliver gets his cuffs done up properly, fingers clumsy on the edges of Connor’s sleeve.

“I’ll be fine,” Connor says after a while, heartbeat thundering steadily under Oliver’s fingertips. “I always am. Trudeau’s an easy op; I know you’ve read the files. Even if they’re way above your clearance level.”

Oliver snorts. “Say that a little louder; Keating hasn’t come out of her office and fired me yet.”

Connor slants another look in Oliver’s direction. “I would never let that happen.”

 _Honeypot trap_ , Oliver repeats to himself. “Sure you won’t,” he tells Connor with a final pat on his wrist, and manages to only be a little bit patronising.

 

* * *

 

Connor’s transmitter goes dark eight hours into Operation Shooting Star.

 

* * *

 

It’s not a huge issue; most agents drop off the grid during missions. Agent Gibbins once went missing for a week before he managed to get his hands on a burner phone to check in with Rebecca. Agent Pratt and Aiden have a complicated rotation of safe houses and secure communication channels that they refuse to share with anyone else. Agent Castillo goes for days at a time without Frank on the comms with her. Agent Millstone is completely shit at keeping in contact at the best of times and it drives Bonnie completely insane.

They’re spies. These things happen.

So when the dot labeled ‘K001’ on Oliver’s screen blips out, all Oliver does -- and can do -- is take a sip of his coffee and keep the encrypted comms open for Connor.

 

* * *

 

That was one week ago.

 

* * *

 

By day nine, even Asher Millstone starts stealing sympathetic looks in Oliver’s direction. Oliver wants to scream.

 

* * *

 

By the time the eleventh day rolls around, Oliver hasn’t slept in over forty hours and still has zero intel to show for it. Hacking into Trudeau’s security systems only tells him that Connor isn’t there; the only other thing of note an unrelated suicide that occurred on Wednesday, on the 43rd floor of the building. Oliver skims through security footage of the shocked crowd for Connor and comes up empty.

Reporting all this to Keating rewards Oliver with the stoniest glare that’s ever been levelled at his existence. He fights the urge to cringe.

“Go home, Mr. Hampton,” Keating says.

Oliver stares at her. “Go home?” he parrots, not liking the hysterical note in his own voice one bit. “I’m supposed to go home and do nothing?”

“As opposed to staying here and doing nothing?” Keating says.

Oliver cringes for real this time.

Keating sighs, and for a single surreal moment, looks about as tired as Oliver feels. “Go home, Mr. Hampton. Take a shower, eat a hot meal and get some sleep. Stop making everyone nervous with your presence. Agent Walsh will report back in due time.”

 

* * *

 

Sam offers to drive Oliver home. The car ride is completely silent save for Oliver having to direct Sam to his apartment and Oliver is thankful for it.

His phone buzzes but it's just Agent Castillo texting to see if he’s okay. Oliver doesn’t remember ever giving her his number, but that’s what you get for working with spies.

Oliver texts back a half-hearted _yeah_ and doesn’t look at his phone again.

 

* * *

 

Oliver's cover identity's choice of residence is a third-floor apartment a couple of blocks away from the House. It's the cosiest of the five decoy apartments he owns, with a kitchen and pantry Oliver actually stocks and uses regularly. Oliver put in all the security features he could think of and then invented more of his own because he had a Saturday afternoon off. He estimates his apartment to be slightly more secure than the Smithsonian.

So when he sees the pinprick of green light at the corner of the doorframe, he freezes. Someone managed to get past his set-up. Someone is in his apartment.

Oliver checks the hallway and draws his gun.

He nudges the door open and creeps into the darkness of his own home, backlit by the yellow glow of the hallway and carried solely by fear and caffeine and his laughably limited field experience. The kitchen is clear; nothing of value there anyway. Whoever had enough skill to break in would probably go straight for Oliver’s laptops and the concealed safe in the bedroom.

Oliver makes for the living room next and stops dead in his tracks, his breath catching painfully in his throat.

Agent Connor Walsh is curled up on his couch and fast asleep.

“What the fuck--”

Connor jerks awake, reaching into his suit jacket for a gun that isn’t there. Apart from the bedhead and wild look in his eyes Connor looks perfectly healthy and whole, and Oliver lets out a breath he hasn’t realised he’d been holding since Connor’s transmitter went dark almost two weeks ago.

“Connor, what the fuck.” Oliver clicks the safety on and holsters his beretta, hands shaking from the adrenaline. “It’s six am in the morning. You can’t just show up at my apartment after twelve days of being MIA -- do you have any idea what I almost--? How did you find out where I live anyway?”

Oliver isn’t sure if it’s because he hasn’t eaten in ten hours or because his body hasn’t gotten the memo to quit it with the fight or flight response but his vision blurs alarmingly enough that he stops.

And breathes in.

Deep and slow and only a little bit raggedly.

He glares at Connor when he’s done. “You were alive and you didn’t check back in and _I almost fucking shot you,_ " he snaps.

Connor laughs. It's a strange, ugly sound. "Sorry about the door. I think I screwed up the wiring when I broke in,” he rasps, scrubbing at his eyes with the heel of his palms.

Oliver pinches the bridge of his nose, hard. Then he doubles back to lock the front door and grabs a beer from the fridge on his way back. He watches Connor take a long pull from the bottle (‘PBR? Really, Oliver?’ ‘Shut up, don’t be a bitch.”) and catalogues all the things that are wrong: the shadows under Connor’s eyes, the yellowing bruises down the side of his neck, the way Connor twitches under Oliver’s gaze like he’s about to crawl out of his own skin. “Connor,” Oliver says, after watching him for a whole minute. “Are you okay?”

Connor smiles at Oliver in a way that’s probably intended to mean _‘why wouldn’t I be?’_.

It comes off a little manic.

Oliver sighs and makes him go take a shower.

 

* * *

 

By the time Oliver gets to bed the first rays of sunlight has begun shining through the blinds. Oliver draws the curtains with more force than is needed, plunging the room into complete darkness. Outside in the living room, Connor has bedded down on Oliver’s couch in borrowed clothes, his bare feet and shower-damp hair poking out from beneath the comforter. It’s more endearing than Oliver wants to admit.

Oliver has no idea what’s going on but he’s exhausted, crashing hard from the caffeine and adrenaline. And Connor is -- Connor is safe. Anything else can wait.

 

* * *

 

Oliver wakes up x amount of hours later to a dip in the mattress. He jerks awake right away, fumbling for his glasses on the nightstand. He finds Connor perched on the edge of his king-sized bed an arm’s length away, eyes glittering in the artificial darkness. Like something out of a fever dream.

“You hacked into Trudeau while I was gone, didn’t you.” Connor says, the manic edge in his voice finally gone.

Oliver nods slowly. “I had to look for you.”

“I wasn’t there,” Connor says, but that much Oliver already knew. “I used him,” Connor says, scratching at his neck, leaving faint red marks on top of already bruised skin. Oliver knows for sure now that the bruises are bite marks. _Honeypot trap_ , his mind supplies helpfully. “I, uh, I used Pax to retrieve the information I needed --”

“Pax,” Oliver repeats slowly. Something about that name is pinging Oliver’s brain.

Connor nods like he’s trying to clear his head. “He had access to--”

Pax. _Paxton._

It hits Oliver. “The suicide at Trudeau -- Paxton Curtis.”

Connor flinches like he’s been hit. “I got the intel,” he says, voice hollow, hands wound tight in Oliver’s bedsheets. “Mission accomplished, right?”

Jesus. Oliver curls his hand around Connor’s wrist and doesn’t say anything for a while.

“I didn’t mean for him to die,” Connor says, an eternity later.

“I know,” Oliver says. “I know you didn’t.” He starts to uncurl Connor’s fingers from around the bedsheets. He tugs Connor under the covers and Connor goes, pliant with exhaustion. Oliver wants to smudge away the shadows under Connor’s eyes with his thumb and curl up in bed with him. Oliver wants to know why Connor is here.

Oliver wants so many things.

“Go to sleep, Connor,” he says instead.

Connor turns onto his side and takes half of the covers with him as he goes.

“Sorry I didn’t check in with you,” Connor says.

Oliver stares at the soft hair curling at Connor’s nape. He wonders what it would be like to bury his fingers in it, to put his lips on Connor's jaw and follow the curve of it with his teeth. He wonders what it would be like to kiss Connor.

He makes himself turn away.

“That’s okay.”

 

* * *

 

Connor’s gone by the time Oliver wakes up. He’s not surprised.

 

* * *

 

Oliver goes into work the next day armed with a giant tumbler of coffee to fix his sleep schedule. He’s not in any hurry; Agent Castillo texted him a couple of hours ago that Connor finally checked in.

He returns to a memo informing him that Agent Walsh has requested to work alone on the next mission.

Oliver thinks that’s what Frank means when he talks about having ice in your veins.

 

 


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Oliver goes to work and doesn’t think beyond the tips of his fingers on home row keys. Connor becomes a labeled dot on the grid of someone else’s computer screen. They don’t talk about the Trudeau incident.
> 
> They don’t talk at all.

 

Oliver goes to work and doesn’t think beyond the tips of his fingers on home row keys. Connor becomes a labeled dot on the grid of someone else’s computer screen. They don’t talk about the Trudeau incident.

They don’t talk at all.

Oliver sees Connor maybe once in the weeks after, purposefully not-watching him stalk out of Keating’s office after a botched job. Oliver knows exactly how botched it was because he tapped into the comms and live feed during his lunch break like a pathetic, lovesick teenager, listening to static-fuzzed machine gun fire and Connor’s calm breathing and hating himself for it.

 

* * *

 

Agents Gibbins and Castillo are deployed as backup a couple of times; once as actual backup and thrice more to haul Connor out of missions that go completely pear-shaped the second they get him on the ground.

 

* * *

 

Connor’s GPS tracker goes dark almost every mission now. Oliver hates that he knows this.

 

* * *

 

“Julian, right?” Connor says a couple of weeks later. The mic barely picks it up.

Oliver doesn’t know why he’s still listening.

But this is what he hears:

1) two pairs of feet stumbling across tiled floors

2) the door, slamming hard enough to shake in its frame

3) the sound of a lock sliding in place

4) belt buckles come undone by impatient hands

5) the noise Connor makes when he kisses Julian, hard and fierce and desperate

6) the sloppy, wet sounds Connor’s crooked mouth makes around Julian’s dick

7) the quiet hitches in Connor’s breath as he fucks into Julian, as Oliver’s foolish heart pounds in time to the violent rattle of a cubicle door and with the way he still wants and wants and wants.

 

* * *

 

Which is why it’s not the best time for Oliver to find Connor sitting on his couch that same evening.

 

* * *

 

“Did you know you were out of beer?” Connor says. He’s still in the suit he fucked Julian in.

Oliver points at the front door.

“Get out.”

 

* * *

 

Ultimately, Oliver’s resolve is a frail and pathetic thing.

The satisfaction of shutting the door in Connor’s face only lasts as long as the time it takes for him to find the Thai food on the kitchen counter. He takes a second to squeeze his eyes shut and indulge in the increasingly familiar sensation of Connor-induced self-loathing. Then he wrenches the door open again.

Connor’s face lights up.

If Oliver were a different person he would want to punch it, probably.

“It’s been, what -- five weeks since you decided you were done with me,” Oliver says, proud of the way his voice doesn’t even waver once. “Why should I let you in.”

“I brought dinner,” Connor says.

Oliver moves to shut the door again.

Connor somehow manages to block the door with his foot and produce a thumb-drive from his jacket at the same time. “And I brought you this.”

Hell no, that’s not playing fair.

 

* * *

 

Connor raids his kitchen for plates and dishes everything while Oliver boots up his second DMZ firewall, sets his other programs to auto-compile and plugs the thumb-drive into the data port on his laptop. Windows full of scrawling code pop up immediately. Oliver is in heaven.

“What am I supposed to find here?” Oliver mutters, speaking more to the computer screen than Connor, who puts a plate of pad thai and a pair of chopsticks on the coffee table by Oliver’s elbow.

Connor sits close enough for Oliver to feel his shrug. “Some answers, hopefully. Can you get past all that--” He points at the screen with his greasy chopsticks. Oliver bats it away. “-- stuff?”

“Of course, I helped develop some of these encryption functions.”

“Huh,” Connor says, and then a little softer: “Hacking genius says what.”

Oliver squints at a command line. “What?”

Connor laughs. “Exactly.”

 

* * *

 

Connor leaves him to it after that and wanders off in the direction of Oliver’s bathroom to take a bath, or to compromise even more of Oliver’s home security configurations. It seems like the kind of thing Connor enjoys doing to Oliver’s home; Oliver doesn’t know what to expect from Connor anymore.

So he wades neck-deep into the beautiful certainty of coding and doesn’t emerge from it until Connor calls out, “Where’s your first-aid kit?”

“Under the sink,” Oliver says, still typing furiously. He’s a couple of lines of code away from beating the encryption when he realises what Connor asked for. “Wait, what?”

He finds Connor sitting on the edge of the bathtub, sewing an uneven line of stitches across his ribs.

_"What."_

Connor drops the needle and thread and lets it dangle from the half-stitched wound. “It’s nothing,” he says, beckoning for Oliver to pass him a couple of squares of toilet paper to mop up some of the blood with.  “Did you get to the intel?”

“What? No!” Oliver snatches the toilet paper back when it becomes apparent that Connor’s about to put it on his shallow but still incredibly disgusting open wound. “How did you sit through dinner like this?”

Connor shrugs. “I was hungry.”

Oliver stares at him. “Wait here,” he says finally, and goes to wash his hands. He puts the lid down on the toilet and sits down in front of Connor when he returns. “I’ll do it.”

Connor looks startled, but he hands the bloody needle over anyway. “Aren’t you in IT?” he says, lips twitching into a smile.

“Extensive first-aid training comes with a career in espionage, apparently, IT or not,” Oliver says. The jagged edge of Connor’s lacerated flesh catches on the first stitch Oliver makes. Fresh blood oozes from the wound but Connor doesn’t flinch. It looks a great deal better than the terrible job Connor did before anyway. “How did you get this?”

Connor exhales warmth onto the back of Oliver’s neck. “Target pulled a hunting knife on me. Who even uses a hunting knife anymore?”

Oliver doesn’t know. Julian didn’t sound like the type.  “Did you get him back?” he asks instead.

“Yeah.”

“Good.”

 

* * *

 

“I’m still mad at you,” Oliver says after a while. He really is, but the anger and hurt feels muted and distant in the humidity of the bathroom. Connor’s skin is unbearably warm under Oliver’s hands. 

Connor doesn’t say a thing.

Oliver concentrates on getting the stitches right after that, and Connor holds perfectly still for him the whole time.

 

* * *

 

“Hey,” Connor says, just as Oliver’s throwing out his ruined towel. Oliver’s old MIT sweater looks almost as ill-fitting and strange on Connor as his hesitant expression. “For what it’s worth, it wasn’t my idea. I didn’t want to work alone.”

Oliver stops what he’s doing with the first aid kit and pays attention.

Connor runs a hand through his damp hair, a strangely obvious tell for a field agent. “Keating needed me for a couple of missions. Objectives were strictly classified,” he says, soft like an apology. “I couldn’t tell you.”

Oliver’s eyes are drawn to his open laptop. “But the thumb-drive you gave me earlier..?”

Connor’s lips thin out. “I want answers. Too many of my ops have been compromised. Keating doesn’t know I’m here.”

Oliver’s blood runs cold. “Do you know what you’re saying?”

Connor looks exhausted when he nods.

_I trust you. I trust you. I trust you._

“I do.”

 

* * *

 

Oliver doesn’t know what he expected.

Lines and lines of data spool out on the screen for them when he finally gets to it -- names, places, dates and times.

Connor swears and flings his mug of coffee across the room. 

Oliver shuts the laptop once it’s done downloading all the intel. It’s nothing he hasn’t already read on the secure intranet at work.

Someone is selling information on the House.

 

 


	3. Chapter 3

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “Listen,” Connor says, hours and hours later. “Listen, I have a plan.”
> 
> Oliver doesn’t like the way it sounds in Connor’s desperate, downturned mouth.

 

The shattered mug lies on the floor for six more hours, shards of ceramic shining like bone in the sticky, dark smear of drying coffee.

Connor paces the living room like a caged animal. “Are you sure you can’t track it?” he asks, running his twitching hands through his hair when he pauses in front of Oliver.

“It’s a dead end, Connor,” Oliver sighs. “I’ve tried twice already.”

Connor growls and steps away. Oliver watches him prowl the remaining six steps to the edge of the room, turn, and come back the same way he went.

Eleven steps there, eleven steps back. Repeat.

Outside, the sun rises to a grey and frigid morning.

 

* * *

 

The plan is this:

Connor slips out of Oliver’s apartment in the bloodstained clothes he arrived in.

Oliver wipes his hard drive and turns the thumb-drive into splintered chunks of plastic under a hammer. He picks the pieces of his favourite mug out of the fibers of his carpet. He cleans his apartment for an hour. Then he gets in the shower and gets ready for work.

Agent Connor Walsh (code name: K001) reports at 0700 that he failed to complete his intelligence-gathering mission.

Oliver gets in at 0900 with bagels (for Rebecca) and coffee (for himself) and pretends to know nothing.

 

* * *

 

Oliver spends the rest of the day putting out fires. Wes’s mission goes south the second he gets eyes on the target, a man whose fortune is built on the blueprints of dirty bombs and even dirtier money. Rebecca talks Wes through an escape plan, alarms blaring over the comm link and bagel crumbs dusting her keyboard while Oliver hacks into the security cameras to erase any traces of Wes’s presence.

“Guess it was bad luck,” Wes pants when they finally get him out of there, the steady rumbling of a train over the comms a welcome change from shrieking sirens and the crack of gunfire.

Oliver knows better.

 

* * *

 

Keating glares at them from behind her desk at the debriefing.

Sam turns up just before she starts ripping Wes and Rebecca’s recon work apart in earnest, cutting her off with a kiss to her temple and a dirty martini before she spins up to an eleven and fires them all.

 

* * *

 

Connor has dark smudges under his eyes and files spread out across the expanse of Oliver’s coffee table when Oliver finally gets home. It’s all very familiar and domestic. It’s everything Oliver wants and yet nothing like it at all.

“I’m starting to think you don’t actually have an apartment of your own,” Oliver says, dumping his satchel on the seat beside Connor.

Connor waves a dismissive hand at him. “Food’s in the microwave,” he says, not looking up from his work.

Oliver goes. He’s starving.

“Wes walked into an ambush today,” Oliver says as he heats the food up. How was your day, honey?

Connor looks up then, jaw flexing as he asks, “Is Waitlist okay?”

Oliver nods. “We need to find the mole before someone dies."

 

* * *

 

Connor takes Oliver through all the files when he returns with the first warm food he’s had all day. Everything’s arranged chronologically, starting from Operation Shooting Star -- back when Connor dropped off the grid at Trudeau -- to last night’s operation.

“My intel-gathering approach was based on the assumption that Marren Trudeau was the one buying and selling information on the black market,” Connor says, handing the leftmost file in the row to Oliver. “That’s the information I was given and the information you probably read on our database as well.”

“But now that we know we have a mole, I can’t trust what the database says.” Connor continues, scowling as he picks up a grainy surveillance photograph of Paxton Curtis and gives that to Oliver too. Oliver traces his finger down the worn creases on the photograph and wonders if he’s following marks made by Connor’s hands, blood-soaked as they are. “I’ve been doing my own recon and it’s not Marren.”

Oliver lifts the picture. “It was Paxton?”

Connor scoffs. “As far as I know, Paxton’s just the fall guy.”

Oliver raises his brows at the phrasing but decides not to comment.

“Someone’s using Trudeau’s contacts to sell information on the House, and Paxton probably tipped them off when I started sniffing around.” Connor clears his throat and looks away. “He played me.”

Oliver shuts the file and puts it back onto the table. “Connor,” he says, slow and wary, and then realises he doesn’t have anything to follow it up with.

Connor looks, for a moment, like the shadowed weight on the edge of Oliver’s bed so many nights ago. Guilt and grief. Gnarled hands fisted in sheets. Then he closes his eyes, and in the quiet eternity between blinks, he breathes in deep, squares his shoulders and is Agent Connor Walsh again.

“Anyway,” Connor says, gesturing at all the files following the one Oliver just returned to the table. The haunted look in his eyes hasn’t faded completely. “I think Shooting Star was the first. And in light of our recent discovery --”

“You think all your ops have been compromised,” Oliver finishes.

Connor laughs and flops back onto the sofa. “It’s freakin’ whack-a-mole,” he spits.

 

* * *

 

“Listen,” Connor says, hours and hours later. “Listen, I have a plan.”

Oliver doesn’t like the way it sounds in Connor’s desperate, downturned mouth.

He was right.

 

* * *

 

All field agents get three days off at the minimum between each operation to ensure peak mental fitness and situational awareness in the field. Connor gets four; Oliver suspects it’s because Keating’s not particularly impressed by his performance lately. Either way it gives them time to prepare, even if Connor scowls at Michaela and is an embarrassing font of snide remarks while she preps for her own mission.

“Seriously, Connor?” Oliver says once Aiden and Michaela are out of earshot. "Are you twelve?"

Connor scowls even harder than Oliver previously thought possible. “Make sure she comes back alive,” he snaps, before shouldering past Oliver into Keating’s office.

She does; Oliver and Aiden make sure of it, and Connor emerges with a folder tucked under his arm and a grim look on his face an hour later.

 _Game on_ , Oliver thinks, and allows himself a precious second to feel really, really scared.

 

* * *

 

“Hey,” Oliver says. Connor’s strapping on a holster over his dress shirt in the armory. He turns at Oliver’s voice.

“Are you sure you want to do this?” Oliver asks. “There are safer ways. You don’t have to walk into--”

“Yes I do,” Connor says, cutting him off mid-sentence, eyes narrowed and moving his head side-to-side, slow and deliberate -- a warning. _We can’t talk about this here._ “It’s my job.”

Oliver shuts his mouth. “Sorry.”

“I’ll be fine,” Connor says. “Now help me with my jacket.”

 

* * *

 

What Operation Bonfire entails is completely irrelevant. Connor’s walking into what will almost certainly be an ambush. His only objective is to survive it.

It’s Oliver’s job to root out the mole once things go south.

It took him two and a half days to build a program to track any and all communication going through the House. All they have to do now is wait for their target to take the bait.

 

* * *

 

 _Be careful_ , Oliver says with the flat of his palms as they smooth down the lines of Connor’s jacket.

 _Be careful_ , Oliver says with the homemade GPS tracker he slips under the collar of Connor’s suit.

“Be careful,” Oliver says, out loud this time, Connor’s gun heavy and cold in his hands, and he shuts his eyes at the way Connor’s hand curls round the back of his neck and stays there for far too long.

 

* * *

 

As predicted, Operation Bonfire is a farce from the get-go.

 

* * *

 

The dot labeled ‘K001’ cuts a frantic line through the map on Oliver’s screen. Live communication data from the House skitters rapidly down in the window next to it.  

“I have visual on the target,” Connor announces, sounding oddly calm despite the wind buffeting through the car windows and into the earpiece. Something blips on Oliver’s laptop. “Would be nice if you could help me lose my tail though.”

“I’m trying,” Oliver says. There’s another beep but Oliver ignores it to hack into the traffic cameras lining the street that Connor’s about to peel into.

Connor grunts. “I might need you to try a little bit harder, he’s --”

And then there’s a crash, a shrieking, sickening sound like metal being punctured.

And then nothing.

 

* * *

 

Somewhere in the chaos, Oliver’s program unearths a code name:

 


	4. Chapter 4

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> He sits alone in a dank little room that smells like piss and sweat until he isn’t alone anymore.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> HELLA TORTURE. So much torture. This entire chapter is rife with torture so please skip it if it's triggering for you.

 

Connor wakes up choking on bile and blood. His shoulder burns with the weight of chains on his wrists, cuffed behind his back and bound to a concrete wall. His right eye is swollen shut beneath the blindfold and he doesn’t remember anything past kicking the car door open and crawling away from the twisted, burning wreckage of his car.

He sits alone in a dank little room that smells like piss and sweat until he isn’t alone anymore.

Someone grabs a fistful of his hair and yanks his head back, far enough to hurt, far enough to feel the jut of his dislocated shoulder against his ear once they start to get really rough.

Connor’s nose bleeds down the back of his throat and coats his teeth and insides red.

 

* * *

 

Every House agent has a cover story and the necessary documents to back it up with.

“My name is Colin West," Connor says over and over to no one in particular, thinking of the House’s retrieval rate and Oliver’s calm voice in his ear. “I’m an investment banker.” It’s a good thing he left the gun in the car when he got out, but he doesn’t know where he is or how long he’s been under, or if Oliver’s tracker is still working. Someone will come for him.

 

* * *

 

“Look, I have money if that’s what you want,” he tries again between beatings, spitting the words between bloodied teeth onto the ground they have him pinned to with a boot to the neck. Connor draws from the fear and panic clawing around in his chest, lets it shake out of him as a plea: “Please -- please just let me go.”

Someone brushes a fingertip down the side of his face in the silence that ensues.

“You’re lying, Mr. Walsh,” the voice says, familiar and warm.

Connor closes his eyes and drops the act.

 

* * *

 

For someone who claims to leave the field work to his wife, Sam Keating is a natural at interrogation.

“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” Connor says. He’s free of the blindfold now that there’s nothing left to hide.

Sam hauls Connor onto his knees. “Oh, but you do,” he says, digging his fingers into Connor’s ruined shoulder. “Who else knows about Trudeau?”

“I don’t know.”

“Try again.”

“I don’t know.”

“Suit yourself,” Sam says as he forces Connor’s head into the water.

 

* * *

 

There is something exquisite about the pain of drowning.

He fights against Sam’s knee between his shoulder blades with everything he has and slicks the inside of his cuffs with blood for relief that doesn’t come. Connor feels nothing beyond the blinding, terrible pain in his chest. Sam’s hand tightens in his hair and pushes him down.

And down.

And down.

Connor holds his breath until he can’t.

 

* * *

 

“I don’t know,” Connor says, retching water and lies. He convulses with it. “I don’t know, I don’t know, I don’t know.”

 

* * *

 

It’s almost a relief when Sam brings a car battery the next time he shows up.

“Give me names, Mr. Walsh,” Sam says, unhurried hands doling out slack on jumper cables coiled like snakes. “Tell me what you know and I’ll stop.”

Connor laughs and throws up pink-tinged water all over Sam’s shoes to make a point.

 

* * *

 

Sam keeps him on the knife’s edge of consciousness; he keeps the voltage high enough to make Connor thrash and scream, and the current dialed low enough to keep him alive. Sam’s phone trills a cheerful little tune hours, weeks, years later, when Connor is reduced to nothing but low animal noises and trembling limbs.

“Must be your day job calling,” Connor gasps. He thinks about the House’s retrieval rate and Oliver’s calm voice in his ear. Maybe Sam will kill him soon and everything will stop. Wouldn’t that be nice. “Annalise needs you back at the office to be useless.”

Sam smiles and pockets his phone. “Don’t worry,” he says, all James Bond villain-like, and Connor is almost offended that he’s being tortured by this asshole. “I’ll come back for you.”

It takes tremendous effort to roll his one working eye but Connor manages it anyway. “Same time next week?” he quips, baring bloody teeth. Sam backhands him hard enough to knock him and the chair he’s bound to over. Everything fucking hurts but he doesn’t make a sound. Not this time.

A needle slides under Connor’s skin. Sam goes away.

And then nothing.

 

* * *

 

Connor wakes up to Oliver’s voice.

 _No,_ he thinks, _please, you can’t be here. I’ve been so careful --_

“Maybe I shouldn’t have let you recruit me all those years ago,” Oliver says, sounding surprisingly calm.

Connor struggles to open his eyes. To apologize. He tries to block out the high, keening noise in his ears. The room echoes with it, the sounds of an animal in unimaginable pain, and Connor wishes it would hurry up and die already.

“I mean, I could’ve said no to all the illegal hacking you wanted me to do back when I was your favorite asset,” Oliver says, standing over Connor like a ghost. “But you knew I’d follow you around like a lovesick puppy forever if you never bothered to fuck me, didn’t you.”

“No,” Connor says, seized with desperation. “No, it’s not like that --”

“Look at me, Connor,” Oliver says, and Connor does. He wishes that he hadn’t.

“Please don’t,” he begs, staring at the exit wound where Oliver’s eye used to be. Blood gushes from it, a river of crimson, all over Oliver’s face, all over Connor’s hands until he’s swimming in it. Until he's drowning in it. 

Connor realizes that the awful, broken noises are coming from him.

 

* * *

 

It’s hard to mark the passage of time without access to natural light. He thinks maybe three days has passed, maybe more, but he can’t tell when he’s conscious and when he’s not. He screams his throat raw either way.

During a fleeting bout of lucidity, Connor pops his shoulder back in place using the handcuffs and his knee for leverage, delirious with pain and an unknown drug burning through his system.

Oliver watches him from the corner of the cell the entire time, laughing.

Connor curls away from the phantom blood and tries to breathe.

 

* * *

 

Even fucking Michaela Pratt would’ve shown up by now.

 

* * *

 

Five days?

Six?

Sam comes back with food. He drags Connor upright, secures him to the chair and tells him between mouthfuls of a cheeseburger: “You can have some of this when you talk.”

Connor doesn’t.

Sam shrugs and takes out the pliers with his greasy hands.

“More for me then.”

 

* * *

 

Connor loses a fingernail for every hour of silence.

It’s not as bad as the drugs. At least Oliver’s gone away. All the blood on the floor is real. Connor is real. The pain is real.

 

* * *

 

He tells himself he won’t beg but he does. He begs for Sam to stop, he pleads with clasped hands to the unforgiving walls of his prison cell for a bullet in his brain, for miscalculated voltage, for water in his lungs to take him away from all of this.

Oliver comes back from time to time to chat, his mangled, bullethole face a strange sort of comfort by now. Connor looks at the bleeding stubs of his fingers and thinks they probably match a little.

“You could’ve had me, you know,” Oliver says, sitting closer than ever, his head a living cross section of the human brain. “Anytime you wanted.”

Connor puts his head in his hands and laughs, silent and wrecked. “I know,” he says, and it’s an obscene relief to finally say it out loud, to a fever dream wearing Oliver’s face. “I know, but you’re more than that.”

 

* * *

 

The compound shakes and Connor shakes apart with it.

He sits alone in a dank little room that smells like piss and sweat and blood until he isn’t alone anymore.

 


	5. Chapter 5

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Oliver wakes up at his desk and trades one nightmare for another. He hasn’t gone home in four days. Connor’s been declared MIA for three.

The first thing Oliver does is try to get a visual on the scene. He fights trembling hands and hacks into traffic cameras, whispering _“please be okay, please, please --”_ between lines of code. The commlink hums with static. His screen goes dark for one breathless second before the feed comes to life.

Oliver watches on a grainy black and white feed as Connor tumbles out of the passenger side of the wrecked car and hits the ground hard. A van -- no plates -- pulls up and two men leap out of it and attempt to grab Connor off the side of the road. Despite the way his left arm is hanging at an unnatural angle Connor puts up a decent fight; he takes one of them down with an elbow to the nose before their driver joins in the fray.

Connor goes down in a smear of blood.

They throw him in the back of the van and vanish into the crush of early morning traffic in less than a minute.

 

* * *

 

Connor’s GPS signal comes to life every couple of minutes at first, skipping around Philadelphia like an erratic heartbeat. They send Laurel in, grim-faced and determined. She chases shadows with Oliver and Frank on comms, her driving only slightly less insane than the driver they’re hunting down.

She gets the drop on the van at 4am in the morning, smashes the driver’s head against the steering wheel and shoots him twice in the chest for good measure.

There’s no one in the back.

“I’m sorry,” Laurel says, voice tight. “It’s a decoy. I don’t have him.”

 

* * *

 

Oliver wakes up at his desk and trades one nightmare for another. He hasn’t gone home in four days. Connor’s been declared MIA for three.

 

* * *

 

“Hey, nerd,” Rebecca says, sometime around the fifth day. She drops a 7/11 sandwich in Oliver’s lap. “Eat. Your boyfriend’s going to be pissed if we let you die.”

Oliver doesn’t look up from the files on the desk. “Thanks,” he says, feeling paper-thin with fatigue and fear, and doesn’t eat. Every hour that passes threatens to turn a rescue into a retrieval mission and Oliver is useless. Connor’s gone -- hurt, waiting, _dying_ \-- and Oliver is useless.

Rebecca reaches over and closes the folder in Oliver’s hands.

“Stop,” she says, taking the file away and dragging Oliver’s laptop closer to her. “I’ll take over. I’ll be your fresh eyes and ears and shit -- whatever you need. Just fifteen minutes, I swear to god, and then you can have all of this back.”

Oliver nods, staring at the sandwich in his lap. He doesn’t move.

Rebecca touches his elbow. “Oliver.”

“Yeah, okay,” he mumbles, and hears his voice crack. He presses his face into his hands and tries not to fall apart.

Rebecca puts her hand on his knee. “We’ll get him back,” she says, voice and grip like steel.

Oliver chokes down the ache that’s been building in his chest and doesn’t cry.

 

* * *

 

The sandwich is terrible. Oliver eats all of it.

“I could go now, if you want,” Rebecca offers, once she makes sure that Oliver’s had some food.

“No,” Oliver says. “Stay.” He pulls Rebecca into a strange little sideways hug that has them bumping shoulders. “Thank you.”

Rebecca shrugs out of it. “No problem. I’m just paying you back for the bagels.”

 

* * *

 

“Hey, Oliver,” Rebecca says, hours later. She takes her feet out of Wes’s lap and turns the laptop around. “What the hell is a Darcy?”

 

* * *

 

“Fuck,” Oliver breathes. “Fuck, fuck--”

Wes puts a concerned hand between Oliver’s shoulder blades. Oliver ducks out of the touch with a gasp, feeling like he might crawl out of his skin at any moment. He slams the laptop shut.

“It’s Sam,” he says, words spilling out of him like blood from a wound. “Sam’s Darcy. Someone’s been selling information on the House and it’s Sam. It’s Sam. I can’t believe it took me this long--”  
  
“Wait, are you sure?” Wes interrupts. Behind him, Rebecca silently makes her way across the conference room and closes the door.

Oliver pulls up files by the dozens on his computer. He thinks of Connor with his broken arm and bloody face and wills his hands not to shake.

“Holy shit,” Rebecca says, clicking through everything. “I always knew he was creepy for a reason.”

 

* * *

 

Michaela stares at Sam’s silhouette through the glass wall of Keating’s office. “I’ll ruin him,” she says under her breath, smiling up at Sam when he passes. “I’m going to destroy him.”

“Yeah,” Asher agrees, hunched in a chair and frowning. “What a fucking asshole.”

 

* * *

 

Sam leaves an hour later. Laurel tails him in a grey Nissan, her GPS tracker making steady progress across Oliver’s screen. Rebecca twirls a thumb drive around on her index finger while Oliver sets up the comm link.

“Signal’s holding,” Wes reports from the armory.

“Same here,” Michaela adds.

“Loud and clear, Eagle Two,” Asher says. “We’re good to go.”

Laurel’s GPS tracker slows to a stop. “Guys,” she announces, voice pitched low over the comms. “I think we have a location.”

Rebecca pats Oliver on the arm one last time before she stands. “That’s my cue, nerd,” she says, pocketing the thumb drive and heading for Sam’s office. “Stop worrying. Bet you a hundred bucks your boyfriend’s going to be fine.”

Oliver swallows with a click and gives them the go-ahead.

 

* * *

 

The actual op is fairly straightforward: they’re here for Connor -- anyone who gets in their way will be dealt with.

 

* * *

 

Michaela sets up on a rooftop across the way. “I’m in position,” she reports, curling her fingers around the stock of the rifle as Wes and Asher rush to link up with Laurel. “Ready whenever you are.”

 

* * *

 

“Flashbang,” Laurel calls for Oliver’s benefit. The explosion screeches through the commlink a second later. Oliver doesn’t flinch.

Asher kicks the door down in the resulting chaos and shoots one of the guards neatly between the eyes with his Kimber. They’re lucky it’s a skeleton crew; Michaela picks the other guard off with a round to the shoulder. Laurel dutifully kicks his pistol away and double taps with another bullet to the head.

Wes is halfway down the stairs before Laurel says “Clear.”

 

* * *

 

The following minutes pass with Wes's quiet breathing in their ears. 

Until:

“Jesus,” Wes whispers.

Oliver's hands curl into fists.

“I found him. He’s --”

A shot rings out over the comms.

 

* * *

 

Oliver jerks at the sound.

“What was that?" He shouts. "Wes -- what was that?”

 

* * *

 

“He’s okay,” Wes yells through the comms. “Connor’s fine, Oliver. He’s okay.”

“Thank god,” Laurel says, her footsteps a noisy clatter down the stairs.

“Wait,” Asher says. “If you didn’t fire a shot--”

“That was me,” Michaela cuts in, sounding apologetic and satisfied all at once. “I caught Sam sneaking out the back. I think he’s still alive, though. Can one of you please do us all a favor and take out the trash?”

 

* * *

 

Connor stirs at the weak thumping coming from the trunk. He squints at the glare of passing streetlights filtering in through the car windows. Asher’s pant leg is soaked through with blood where Connor’s head is cushioned and the radio's playing Jingle Bells.

Connor groans.

Michaela shifts in her seat and peers down at him, eyes huge with worry. “Connor?”

He’s not sure what’s real or not anymore.

“What the fuck took you so long?” Connor says wetly, and passes out again.

 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> i lied!!!!!!!!!!!! there's another chapter!!!


	6. Chapter 6

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “You said he was okay,” Oliver says numbly.

 

They get Connor back a little after three in the morning. He's a dead weight shared between Wes and Asher, a trail of blood on the floor all the way down to Medical where Oliver’s waiting. Laurel and Michaela follow in their wake, pausing every couple of seconds to shove a flex-cuffed and limping Sam forward with the barrels of their handguns.

Oliver stares at Connor’s hands. The hallway smells like old copper.

“You said he was okay,” Oliver says numbly.

A couple of doctors bump into him in the rush to get Connor onto a stretcher. Wes tugs Oliver out of the way as they wheel Connor in for surgery.

“He is,” Wes says, voice gentling into well-meaning condescension, and something hard and brittle in Oliver snaps. “It’s not as bad as it looks.”

Oliver wrenches away from Wes and punches Sam.

 

* * *

 

 _“Fuck you,”_ Oliver screams as Wes and Asher scramble to pull him off Sam. Michaela hauls Sam up and marches him down the hallway and out of Oliver’s reach.

Sam’s nose is bleeding down the front of his shirt and Oliver hates him so much that he’s choking with it.

He doesn’t realize he’s crying until Laurel drags him down into a hug and lets him.

 

* * *

 

Asher offers him a high five afterwards.

 

* * *

 

Oliver doesn't mean to but he falls asleep to the slow beat of a heart monitor hours later, his bruised knuckles curled over Connor’s, aching down to the bone with the need to hold on and not let go.

 

* * *

 

“I didn’t talk,” Connor slurs, burning up with fever and shaking to pieces under Oliver’s hands. “I won’t talk. I won’t.”

“I know you won’t,” Oliver says, holding Connor’s narrow wrists still. The disconnected IV line leaks all over Oliver’s jeans.

Connor stifles a wounded cry when the nurses finally sedate him, and in the wretched silence that follows, pulls out of Oliver’s grip and touches frantic, drug-clumsy fingers to the crest of Oliver’s cheekbone, to the soft skin of his eyelid. Like he's trying to make sure Oliver is there.

Oliver can’t breathe.

“Please don’t go,” Connor begs, glassy-eyed and fading fast.

“I’m not going anywhere, Connor,” Oliver says, throat unbearably tight. “Go to sleep.”

 

* * *

  
Connor spends the next five days hurting, curled away from light and breathing slowly through bruised skin and withdrawals. ( _it’s heroin_ , the doctors say,  _mixed with something else entirely_ , and Oliver has never been the sort to break things out of anger but he feels like he just might start.)

  

* * *

 

“I’ll eat if you will,” Connor says on the third day, in response to Oliver’s offering of chicken soup.

He hasn’t kept anything down for longer than ten minutes but Oliver still wants to try.

“You look like shit,” Connor elaborates.

“Wow, asshole,” Oliver says, holding a spoonful of bland soup to Connor’s face. “Have you looked in a mirror lately?”

Connor smiles, hollow-eyed and pale, and eats. They share the soup. Oliver strokes Connor's hair and tells him it’s okay when he retches it all back up again afterwards.

 

* * *

 

Connor claws out of his dreams every night.

“You’re safe,” Oliver says, on the fourth night, letting Connor dig his damaged fingers into the meat of his arm. “You’re safe. You’re okay -- Connor, stop,  _stop_ \-- you’re in Medical. You’re safe.”

“Fucking PTSD bullshit,” Connor laughs hysterically, the words coming out as ragged as the breaths he’s taking. His lashes are wet with tears. “I can’t sleep. Don’t make me sleep.”

“We’ll stay up then,” Oliver says. “Watch infomercials, do the crossword -- anything you want.”

Oliver ends up doing most of the solving. Connor scratches at his bandages with restless hands, propped up on the bed with pillows, Oliver’s tablet on his lap. He has the crossword app pulled up and the brightness setting dialed down to as low as it can go. He gets maybe one word out of ten right on his own, gathering scattered thoughts with the occasional wince and a shake of his head.

“Ten down,” Connor says as the sun rises slowly outside. “Aching?”

Oliver leans over and types it in for him. Connor’s hands are a mess of bandages still; touch screens will be a challenge until they’re off. The app chimes a jaunty little tune at the correct answer.

“Yay,” Connor says, completely deadpan, and tells Oliver to start another game.

  

 

* * *

 

"One more crossword," Connor says, scrubbing at his face with his wrist.

Oliver obliges.

 

* * *

 

Oliver dozes off around mid-afternoon, slumped forward in one of Medical’s awful chairs, his cheek on Connor’s scratchy sheets. He thinks he feels fingers carding through his hair in the transient space between anxious dreams.

 

* * *

 

It’s dark by the time Oliver wakes, and it’s a disconcerting affair compounded by blackout curtains and the lack of a clock that has him struggling to sit upright again. Connor hands him his glasses; Oliver doesn’t remember taking them off.

“I thought Sam had you killed,” Connor says suddenly.

Oliver stops working out the kinks in his neck.

“I thought you were dead at one point,” Connor continues slowly, his expression blank, his quiet voice carrying in the dim room. “It was the pain, or the drugs -- I don’t know. It got confusing.”

“Connor--” Oliver says, stricken.

“You’re important to me,” Connor says, sounding scared. Like he needs to get the words out before he can’t. “Do you understand?”

Oliver can hear his own breath rasping in the silence.

“I understand,” he says, feeling like he’s falling, feeling like his heart is about to beat out of the confines of his ribcage for it. And then he thinks, _fuck it_ , and puts his hands on Connor’s face like he’s wanted to for years. It’s easier in the dark -- to stroke his thumbs against yellowing bruises. To cradle the sharp slant of Connor’s jaw and kiss him.

Soft and sweet. Like he's always wanted to.

Connor exhales sharply and surges into the kiss. Oliver loses his balance. He plants a knee on the edge of the hospital bed and holds them both up with a shaking arm, with Connor’s desperate fingers bracketing Oliver’s face like he wants to crawl into the space between their bodies and stay there forever.

 

* * *

 

“Where’s this from?” Connor asks later, picking Oliver’s right hand up and inspecting his swollen knuckles.

Oliver scowls at the memory. “Punched Sam.”

Connor’s eyebrows go up. “No shit,” he says, sounding impressed, and for a single moment he sounds like someone who’s approaching the realm of okay. Oliver has to kiss him again, just because he can.

“You’re important to me,” Oliver says when they break apart, and Connor goes still, eyes wide in the darkness, his crooked mouth slack. “I need you to understand this too.”

 

* * *

  

They’re squashed together on the tiny single bed, shoulder to shoulder just to be close, Connor’s IV line draped carefully over Oliver’s chest so they’ll both fit without tangling it. Connor is still painfully thin and mottled with bruises, held together with stitches and Oliver's hands. Oliver still can’t get him to eat without having to run for a basin for Connor to throw up in minutes later. They stay up for far too long doing the crossword and when it’s time for Connor to sleep he curls into Oliver’s space, miserable with dread until the fatigue takes over and drags him under. Oliver is there to hold him when he wakes up screaming.

 

* * *

  

“Five across,” Connor says, tangling his bare feet with Oliver’s. Medical's releasing him today. “Actually.”

“Yeah?”

The tablet chimes.

They’re going to be okay.

 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> holy shit i'm done. i'm freeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee
> 
> and thank you so much for sticking with me throughout this (largely unplanned) story. i appreciate and treasure every comment and kudos and i want you to know that you are all fabulous people.

**Author's Note:**

> since this is complete idfic and literally the only time i've ever attempted posting for any of my fandoms, it's basically been dumped straight from my gdoc into ao3. all horrible mistakes are my own, including the awful misuse of hacker and espionage jargon. [monkey covering face emoji]
> 
> i'm on [tumblr](http://hairgelled.tumblr.com/) if you want to swing by and yell at me for writing stuff wrong.
> 
> lastly, thank you so much for reading and commenting. i can't tell you just how much i appreciate it. :')


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